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Pennsylvania Dutch Country
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pennsylvania Dutch Country or less commonly German Pennsylvania refers to an area of southeastern Pennsylvania that by the American Revolution had a high percentage of Lutheran, German Reformed, Moravian, Amish, Mennonite and other German sectarian inhabitants and where the Deitsch language was historically common. The term was used in the middle of the 20th century as a description of a region with a distinctive Pennsylvania Dutch culture, but in recent decades the composition of the population is changing and the phrase is used more now in a tourism context than any other.
Geographically the area referred to as Dutch country centers around Allentown, Hershey, Lancaster, Reading and York and the surrounding counties. It includes the counties of Chester, Lancaster, York, Adams, Franklin, Dauphin, Lebanon, Berks, Montgomery, Bucks, Northampton, Lehigh, Schuylkill, Snyder, Union, Juniata, Mifflin, Northumberland, and Centre. Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants would spread from this area outwards outside the Pennsylvania borders between the mountains along river valleys into neighboring Maryland (Washington and Frederick counties), West Virginia, Virginia (Shenandoah Valley) and North Carolina and this larger region has been historically referred to as Greater Pennsylvania. The historic Pennsylvania Dutch diaspora in Ontario has been referred to as Little Pennsylvania.
The term "Dutch" is an archaic term for Germans, and refers to the German-speaking origins of some of the earliest European immigrants to the area in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The German-speaking settlers came from a variety of countries and religious backgrounds, but most became assimilated to Anglo-American language and culture beginning in the later 19th century with English language evangelism efforts, the outlawing of German language schooling and culminating soon after the turn of the twentieth century with World War One, consolidated schools and the advent of mandatory public education until the age of 16 with added pressures from increased mobility, the influence of English language media communications and urbanization.
The Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites, who have resisted these efforts most successfully, have retained aspects from their 18th-century way of life, including the Deitsch dialect; however, these groups have changed significantly in the last two hundred years. Nevertheless, for the Old Order groups, change has come slower, and gradually they have became more and more distinctively different as the surrounding rural and urban population of Pennsylvania changed.
Until the middle of the 20th century, the region, outside of industrializing cities, was nearly entirely rural, based on an agricultural economy. In the middle of the 20th century, both Amish and non-Amish entrepreneurs began to promote the area as a tourist destination. Though there are still plenty of Amish attempting to follow their traditional way of life, tourism and population growth have significantly changed the appearance and cultural flavor of the area. This area is within 50 miles of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Harrisburg, and has not escaped the effects of being on the western edge of the East Coast conurbation from Washington to New York City.
In the 1990s Lancaster was one of the fastest growing and most prosperous counties of Pennsylvania. Hispanic populations have replaced other earlier ethnic groups in the cities of Lancaster, Reading and Allentown, and now these cities and the counties around them have far more Spanish speakers than "Deitsch" speakers.
